September 02, 2019

What can we do when the patient needing emergency care is the earth? What life support can physicians offer our ailing planet? History can help us understand and answer these pressing questions.

A deluge of recent reports document the degradation of Earth’s ecosystems. Local and national governments have declared climate emergencies, and it is ever harder to deny that global warming will have a dire impact on human well-being. This recognition has prompted calls to arms by medical doctors and public health experts. Andy Haines and Kristie Ebi demand that we heed “an imperative for climate action.”

“Frightened by the unfolding climate crisis,” Caren Solomon and Regina LaRocque call on Journal readers “to focus our efforts on areas where our voices are most powerful”: to foster climate action in medical schools, support divestment from the fossil-fuel industry, and advocate for fundamental changes in how we relate to our fragile environments.

David Hunter, Howard Frumkin, and Ashish Jha envision a “preventive medicine for the planet and its peoples,” in which the health professions “use standard tools of health communication to explain the risks of climate change and the benefits of mitigation and adaptation.”

Samuel Myers, director of the Planetary Health Alliance, seeks a “paradigm shift” in medicine and public health, requiring changes in how “we train, reward, promote, and fund the generation of health scientists who will be tasked with breaking out of their disciplinary silos to address this urgent constellation of health threats.”

Under the new rubric of “planetary health,” physicians argue strenuously that the health of the human population depends on the health of our planet’s life-support systems. Has it therefore become the responsibility of everyone dedicated to preserving and restoring human health to care for the ailing earth?

Advocates insist that the degradation of the planet’s ecosystems and global environmental changes demand an expansion of medical ethics and practice beyond their conventional focus on the relationships among patients, doctors, and societies.

Some propose a whole-earth ethic for public health, one that attends to our relationship with the planet we inhabit, as well as an intergenerational ethic focused on caring for future humans who will otherwise inherit the wreckage we have left.

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What can we do when the patient needing emergency care is the earth? What life support can physicians offer our ailing planet? History can help us understand and answer these pressing questions.

A deluge of recent reports document the degradation of Earth’s ecosystems. Local and national governments have declared climate emergencies, and it is ever harder to deny that global warming will have a dire impact on human well-being. This recognition has prompted calls to arms by medical doctors and public health experts. Andy Haines and Kristie Ebi demand that we heed “an imperative for climate action.”

“Frightened by the unfolding climate crisis,” Caren Solomon and Regina LaRocque call on Journal readers “to focus our efforts on areas where our voices are most powerful”: to foster climate action in medical schools, support divestment from the fossil-fuel industry, and advocate for fundamental changes in how we relate to our fragile environments.

David Hunter, Howard Frumkin, and Ashish Jha envision a “preventive medicine for the planet and its peoples,” in which the health professions “use standard tools of health communication to explain the risks of climate change and the benefits of mitigation and adaptation.”

Samuel Myers, director of the Planetary Health Alliance, seeks a “paradigm shift” in medicine and public health, requiring changes in how “we train, reward, promote, and fund the generation of health scientists who will be tasked with breaking out of their disciplinary silos to address this urgent constellation of health threats.”

Under the new rubric of “planetary health,” physicians argue strenuously that the health of the human population depends on the health of our planet’s life-support systems. Has it therefore become the responsibility of everyone dedicated to preserving and restoring human health to care for the ailing earth?

Advocates insist that the degradation of the planet’s ecosystems and global environmental changes demand an expansion of medical ethics and practice beyond their conventional focus on the relationships among patients, doctors, and societies.

Some propose a whole-earth ethic for public health, one that attends to our relationship with the planet we inhabit, as well as an intergenerational ethic focused on caring for future humans who will otherwise inherit the wreckage we have left.